


The Irresistible Force

by warriorpoet



Category: Fake News RPF
Genre: Community: fakenews_fanfic, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-27
Updated: 2011-12-27
Packaged: 2018-03-07 22:35:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,356
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3185759
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/warriorpoet/pseuds/warriorpoet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The new guy gets two weeks to prepare before the show relaunches. Stephen gives it six months before they're all off the air.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Irresistible Force

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the 2011 FNFF Secret Santa for underthepiano, who asked for a fic set during Jon's first year at TDS, based on the prompt _"but if I built you a city, would you let me? would you tear it down?"_

The new guy gets two weeks to prepare before the show relaunches.

Stephen gives it six months before they're all off the air.

\--

The new guy is charming, and earnest, and maybe a little nervous. He doesn't seem to know what to do with his arms, Stephen notices, balling his hands into fists by his side, then crossing his arms over his chest, then back to his sides. But he's masking the nerves well. 

He has to. He has An Agenda.

It's about making things more relevant, solidifying the voice of the show, and how he intends to have more editorial control and presence than Kilborn ever had. It's a We Can Do Better kind of speech.

Stephen stands at the back of the room and watches loaded glances dart between the more skeptical members of the staff.

Not even six months. They'll probably be done in four.

\--

A few days out from the relaunch, Jon asks Stephen to go to dinner with him.

"What?" Stephen asks. "Like a date?"

Jon hesitates, before stammering something in the negative, and Stephen shakes his head and laughs. "I'm just messing with you, man."

Jon hesitates again, and then smiles a relieved smile.

\--

They go somewhere nice, somewhere nice enough that Jon is wearing a jacket and tie. Stephen suspects that he borrowed it from the show: it doesn't quite fit right, boxy around the shoulders and long in the arms. There hasn't really been time for a proper fitting.

They've barely placed their drink orders before Jon launches into it.

"I want you to stay."

Stephen, water glass to his lips, chokes a little. "I'm sorry?"

"I've heard talk that you're thinking of leaving. I want you to stay. Out of anyone that's there, I want you to stay."

"Okay..."

"I like what you do. I don't think they realized what they had before, and they weren't putting you to your best use. I want to change that."

Jon leans forward across the table, his voice soft and insistent. His eyes lock on Stephen's and don't break away.

Stephen makes his face go blank until he can figure out whether this is the usual line of backslapping industry bullshit he staunchly refuses to fall for, or if this is actually going somewhere.

Jon's dives into a modified version of his Agenda speech. Only this time it makes Stephen a key component, a starring role, a We Can Do Better But I Can't Do It Without You kind of speech. He falls short of pulling out a chart with full color graphs illustrating how much he believes in Stephen, but he's definitely trying to sell something.

Stephen isn't buying.

"Jon, I appreciate that, I really do, but I'm in development on a series right now--"

"I know. And if it's picked up, we'll cut the amount of field work you have to do way down. I want to start doing more stuff in the studio, so we could get you appearing there more. It'll be a day -- not even that, an afternoon -- every few weeks. We can give you as much time as you need. We just want you for the long haul."

"'We'? Who's this 'we'?" Stephen asks, the new guy's over-earnest charm, his shameless schmoozing, his ridiculous too-big jacket and his million-dollar contract suddenly burrowing under Stephen's skin, rising up like a welt. "Aren't you talking about the same people who committed this oh-so-egregious underutilization of me?"

Jon is silent. He leans back in his seat, toys with the silverware, smooths the crease in the linen napkin with a thumbnail. He's not looking at Stephen anymore. "It's me," he finally says, crossing his arms on the table. "I want to work with you on this. I think... I need your help to make this the best possible thing it can be. It won't work as well without you. I'm sure of that. It'll work, in some way, but it won't be... you're the guy. I've heard a lot about you. This thing won't work as well without you and everything you can bring to it." He pauses to study Stephen's still-blank expression. "I'm coming on too strong, aren't I?"

Stephen breaks, chuckling at this surprising turn to confessional self-awareness. "Yeah, you kind of are."

Jon shakes his head, mostly to himself. "I'm sorry," he says. "But I'm serious, I mean it. And... well, there, Stephen, I've said my piece, and there it is. Do whatever you want with it."

They fall into a silence that isn't quite comfortable until their drinks arrive and Jon asks Stephen how long he's been in New York.

\--

They pause on the sidewalk outside; pulling on their long coats, stuck in that awkward limbo moment where they've said their goodnights but don't know which direction the other is going, not sure if they'll still be walking together. Jon turns one way to hail a cab, and Stephen turns the other to start walking back to where he parked. He suddenly stops short and turns on his heel.

"I won't leave," he says, his hand catching Jon's sleeve.

Jon looks back at him in surprise and confusion, lips parted and brow furrowed. "What?"

"I'm not saying I'm staying. I'm just saying I'm not leaving."

Jon nods, as though that's good enough for now. "Thanks. I--I'm glad."

They shake hands and say goodnight again. Jon's hand is cold when he touches Stephen, and Stephen keeps his hands in his pocket the whole way back to his car.

\--

There are some of Stephen's unaired field pieces left over from last year. They run them in Jon's first few weeks. Stephen sits beside him at the desk and reads the prompter and maybe throws in a line rewrite or two at rehearsal. 

It doesn't seem that much different.

Paul e-mails him pages and endless questions about location permits and Amy leaves him voicemails that attempt to describe the perfect wig.

He secludes himself in the stairwell during tapings and writes. A couple of times he almost misses his cue.

He's not around to see the grim determination in Jon's eyes when the cameras aren't on. 

\--

It reaches a point where, even in his distracted state, Stephen notices what people in the office are saying.

That Jon's too cocky and too stubborn and too demanding and doesn't have a clue what he's doing and trying to change things too fast and doing what's right for him and wrong for the show.

The complaints are getting loud. The mid-afternoon shouting matches are getting louder.

\--

Jon chain smokes in his office, sitting by the open window, exhaling clouds into the cold night over 54th. 

"You're still okay with working around me?" Stephen asks.

"Yeah. Yeah." He pauses to take a drag. "You're still okay with coming in every once in a while?" 

"Yeah. I mean... I will when I can, you know? We haven't started production and already it feels like we're weeks behind."

"Well. We'll be here ready for you when you get back."

Stephen can't help it. He laughs. "Are you sure about that?"

Jon slowly turns to glare at Stephen, and for a split second Stephen is sure he's about to get punched in the face.

But then Jon grins, and taps ash into coffee cup. "Yeah. Who knows? I'll still be here, I guess... I might be mopping the floor or something, but I'll still be here."

Stephen laughs, and a thought occurs to him that has been floating around the back of his mind for a few weeks now. "Hey, do you mind if I offer a staffing suggestion?"

"You mean something more productive than 'get a new one'? Please do, because that's all I've got right now."

"Call Steve Carell. Even if you just try him out while I'm not around, you'll end up wanting to keep him."

Jon nods in recognition at the name. "He'd be interested in this?"

"He'd be interested in _working_."

"All right. Thank you." Jon turns back to the window, sparking up his lighter again. "You know, I'd wish you luck with the thing, but I can't help hoping you fail."

Stephen smirks. He knows the feeling.

\--

Steve calls him while he's rewriting jokes in a decommissioned school.

"Colbert, what the hell did you get me into?"

"Is it really that bad?"

"One of the writers just walked out."

"Really? Who?"

"I don't _know_. I've been here for two weeks. I don't know _anybody_. They're all too angry to talk to."

"Um." Stephen doodles in the margins of his script, a weird little man with a head shaped like a peanut. "Well... just don't make any big purchases, buddy."

"Thanks a _lot_."

\--

Jon calls him to find out his schedule, trying to grab an afternoon of his time somewhere, anywhere.

He comes in for a green screen bit. His guilt at being away from the set for a day ebbs as he reads the draft Jon hands him.

"I like this," he says.

"Yeah?" Jon looks tired; the weeks since Stephen last saw him have drained some of his nervous energy. "Carell gave me a hand on it; he's got your voice down."

"You wrote it?" Stephen asks, surprised.

"Yeah, mostly. It seems to save time at this point. I'm not getting much that's even close to what I'm looking for, and a lot of pushback when I try to give notes..." he trails off and rubs his eyes. "I'm looking around for a new head writer, 'cause I can't keep doing it like this."

"You could've fooled me." Stephen hands him the pages back. "I've been watching when I can and whatever bullshit is going on here, it's not showing up on the air."

Jon shrugs it off and reaches for a pen. "You got anything in this you think needs to be changed?"

"You've been running a lot of my old bits," Stephen says.

"Is that a problem?"

"No, no, I just... I've been wondering why."

Jon shrugs again. "Gotta keep your seat warm, man. Keep your visibility up while you take time off. Don't want anyone out there forgetting about you."

"But a lot of it's old stuff... isn't that taking a step backwards from where you want to go?"

"It's building a foundation for where I want to go," Jon says.

Stephen runs a bullshit check on him, yet again. Jon is busying himself with something in his desk drawer, dropping pens and paperclips and sticks of gum across the blotter.

The check comes up empty.

"That might be one of the nicest things anyone has ever said to me," Stephen says quietly.

Jon's tired half-smile and one-shouldered shrug make Stephen's heart hurt. 

"Were there any changes you had in mind?" he asks again, finally looking up.

Stephen picks up the script, the words blurring on the page.

"No. I really like this."

\--

Jon seems a little stiff, like he's not quite used to reading a script off a TelePrompTer while his scene partner is on the other side of the room. And why would he be? Stephen takes a moment to adjust, gives in and lets his faith in the writing carry him through, and by the third laugh break, something clicks. He sees Jon smile in the monitor, an almost imperceptible relaxing of his shoulders.

The laughter gets louder, their rhythm tighter.

It works.

All the stress of juggling schedules, all the working around to get him there for that moment is entirely worth it to see the way Jon jumps up from the desk as they go to commercial and announces Stephen's name to the audience.

For that single, perfect moment, everything works.

\--

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart passes its four month birthday without Stephen. 

He sends over a bottle of wine with a card attached:

_And they said you wouldn't make it._

He reads Jon's e-mail response the next morning:

_Thanks for the wine. Right now I'm drunk enough to believe that your use of the past tense was accurate._

\--

Strangers With Candy wraps its first season. Stephen gets one day off and two days back at the Daily Show and then he's out on the road again, Jon's apologies heavier than his carry-on luggage.

"It's fine, it's what I do here," Stephen says.

"Things are going to change, I promise you."

Jon looks infinitely more tired than Stephen feels. And Stephen is _exhausted_.

He spends the entire flight to California listening to his segment producer's list of grievances and general complaints about Jon. It bothers Stephen, sets him on edge, but he stays noncommittal, if only for the sake of making this shoot something better than unbearable. 

He gets it now, though, the sheer weight and magnitude of the immovable object that some of his co-workers have dropped in front of Jon.

Stephen gets it now, why all of Jon's nervous energy and much of his drive has been beaten out of him.

He makes a decision, and he knows why things have to change.

\--

Stephen swings through Georgia to work on another piece and returns to New York, right into the middle of an argument already in progress.

He hears raised voices in the editing room and lingers near the open door, wondering if he should get involved.

"Stephen."

Jon catches him.

"Hey, you're back. Great. Can I get your opinion on something?"

"Sure," he says. The tension in the room seems to suck him in and drag him closer to it, like walking through thick mud. The producer he shared the flight to California with sits at the Avid, his opinion of Jon clearly written in his scowl.

The dispute is over the inclusion of a question that Stephen thought had been wrong the moment he asked it. It was one of those fish-in-a-barrel easy shots, the kind of thing that Jon had said they weren't going to do anymore. He'd been away for a while, he was out of practice, and it was the easy, lazy joke to go for. And there it is now, in the producer's first cut, right at the top of Jon's list of changes.

The tape stops, and Stephen shrugs. "I think Jon's right. It's not the right direction."

"You've been gone for _how_ long? How the fuck can you judge--"

"I know what I'm doing," Stephen says quietly. "This doesn't work."

"Cut it." Jon's voice is clipped, his decision final. 

"You're _wrong_. You're both wrong."

Jon's jaw sets, his hand works itself into a fist by his side. "Stephen, can you give us a minute?"

"I can stay--"

"Give us a minute? Please?"

The muscles in Jon's cheeks flex as his teeth grind. His eyes are cold, but they soften as he looks at Stephen, reassuring him, thanking him.

Stephen nods and silently leaves, back up to his office.

Even from inside the stairwell, he hears the editing room door slam.

\--

He's been back in the office for four hours and already needs a break. He makes coffee and takes it up to the roof, where he always used to hide back when he was the new guy and nobody ever seemed to notice if he was missing.

Stephen isn't the only one with this escape route.

Jon sits not far from the door, perpetual cigarette in his hand.

"I didn't know anyone else was up here," Stephen says.

"Oh. Hey."

"Do you want me to leave you alone?"

"What? No. No, you're -- stay. You can stay."

Stephen sits not far from him.

"Sorry about this morning," Jon says. "That wasn't fair of me to drag you into it."

"No, it's okay... I appreciate you asking my opinion."

Stephen can hear Jon sucking smoke through the filter, just quietly, barely audible over the noise from the street below.

"I should've stuck up for you more," he adds.

Jon exhales slowly. "No, you didn't need to. I mean... why would you? What would you possibly have to gain from that?"

Stephen shrugs. "It would have been the right thing to do. You were doing what's best for the show, and you needed the support. I should've tried to, I don't know... help you win him over."

"Yeah. Well. He's not gonna be a problem anymore."

"You fired him?"

"He quit." Jon gives Stephen a wry smile. "Guess that's one more job to fill."

"Shit."

"Yeah. Only a matter of time before mine's up too." Jon tilts his head back and sighs up at the clouds. "I don't know how much longer I can take this. Maybe I should just jump before I get pushed."

"No," Stephen says with such sudden force that Jon's head snaps back to him, his brow creased.

"Why?"

"You're doing exactly what you said you were going to do, and it's what you want to do, and if the powers that be are letting you do it, then you _do it_."

"Okay..." A smile tugs at the corner of Jon's mouth, skeptical, but amused.

"I'm serious! What's the point of doing something you don't believe in? If the people here aren't able to give themselves to what you want to do, then they can go somewhere else."

"Oh, believe me, they have been."

"And that's great. I hope everyone is going to be a lot happier." Stephen sits forward, leaning in to Jon, drawing him in. "Ever since I got here, this place has just been a paycheck to me. I was happy that I finally had a decent, steady job, and I always wanted to do my best just to not get _fired_ , but it never really _meant_ anything beyond that. The last few months, working on something that was part mine again, you know... I realized just how much I didn't care before." 

"I heard you got picked up for a second season," Jon says quietly.

"Yeah. Yeah, we did. And it's wonderful, and I'm happy about it, but now that I'm faced with juggling two projects that I believe in, it's like I'm faced with an overabundance of caring. As great as that is, it's scary, and it's exhausting, but... I need it," Stephen laughs.

"What's the other one?"

He grins. "This. Here. Jon, I like... you. I like working with you, I like what you're trying to do... what you're _doing_."

Jon smiles down at his hands, the forgotten cigarette burning down between his fingers. He stubs it out, brushes his hand off on his jeans. "Thank you," he murmurs. "I... I needed to hear that."

"I should've said it sooner. I should've _known_ it sooner."

"Nah. Hell, if I'd had you around more to give me pep talks like that, maybe I would've been nicer to everyone and we'd still be stuck with a lot of people who secretly hate me."

"At least now it's only a few of them."

Jon bursts into laughter. "Christ, what am I _doing_ here?"

Stephen stands and holds his hand out to Jon. "C'mon. Let's go find out."

Their eyes lock as Stephen pulls him up from the ground, Jon's smile creeping up on him as he stands. Stephen holds his hand a beat too long, until Jon laughs.

"Can I have my hand back?" he asks.

Stephen lets go with a sheepish grin.

Jon bites his lip, suddenly interested in the crumpled cigarette butts he left behind. "Thank you," he murmurs.

"No, Jon," Stephen says. "Thank _you_."

\--

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart passes its six month birthday, and Stephen asks Jon out to dinner.

"So," Stephen asks as soon as the waiter leaves with their drink orders. "What are your ideas for how we do the election?"

Jon's hand overs over the table, half way to his water glass. The left side of his mouth turns up before he catches his bottom lip between his teeth and stifles a laugh.

"What?" Stephen asks through his own bewildered chuckle.

"Nothing," Jon says, shaking his head. "Nothing at all."

He takes a sip of water and leans forward as he sets it down. His voice is low and earnest.

Stephen hangs on every word.


End file.
